Friday, July 13, 2012

PA voter ID law

The Pennsylvania legislature recently enacted a voter suppression ID law that supporters say is a common sense measure to ensure that people who vote are who they say they are. After all a photo ID is required to buy alcohol or fly on an airplane. Critics contend that this is another way that Republicans are trying to rig the next election since in person voter fraud is non existent. This is on top of the Citizens United decision that threw out the campaign finance laws that lets billionaires who make their money in China spend unlimited amounts of money in an American election. Foreign money in an American election used to be illegal. Before that PA Republicans wanted to change the way we cast our Electoral College votes changing winner take all to allocating them by Congressional District.

Locally there have been shenanigans with absentee ballots but the only case I remember of in-person voter fraud was when W-B Area school director Joe Moran's kid was up for a seat on the WVW School board but it came out that he had been voting at his old man's address in the Miner's Mills section of Wilkes-Barre. Even then he only voted once but at the wrong address.

Before Tom Corbett became Governor he was the Attorney General of the Commonwealth but he didn't prosecute one case of voter fraud. He was busy with the Bonusgate investigation that put Democrats in in jail and ignored the allegations against Jerry Sandusky.

To help sell this new law the Corbett Administration gave a contract to a Romney fundraiser.

TNC: Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's administration has signed a $249,660 contract with a company run by Mitt Romneyfundraiser, former state GOP party executive director, pharmaceutical lobbyist, and school voucher advocate Chris Bravacos to direct a media campaign promoting the state's Voter ID law.

Yes,
that very same law, requiring that voters present identification at the
polls, which critics contend will suppress Democratic-leaning
non-white, poor, elderly and youth voters and which House Majority Leader Mike Turzai recently boasted (video) is “gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”

GENE
STILP FILES FEDERAL AND STATE COMPLAINTS AND REQUESTS FOR INVESTIGATION
INTO THE $249,000 VOTER IDENTIFICATION CONTRACT AWARDED TO THE BRAVO
GROUP THROUGH THE PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF STATE.

Gene
Stilp, today filed a complaint and a request for investigation with the
United States Department of Justice at the Middle District federal
offices. Stilp also filed similar complaints and requests for
investigation with the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General and the
Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission.

The complaints and
requests for investigations concerns the use of federal taxpayer funds
to pay certain Pennsylvania lobbyists who have a long history of
Republican political involvement through a Pennsylvania State contract
approved and administered by the administration of Republican Governor
Tom Corbett.

Gene Stilp said, “There is a direct and
substantial conflict of interest when Tom Corbett, the Republican
governor of Pennsylvania, through his Department of State, awards a
quarter of a million dollar contract utilizing federal funds to a
Republican operative that as recently as April hosted a Mitt Romney
event in Harrisburg. It is even more questionable when the contract
involves the voter identification process which is under considerable
criticism for a large number of Pennsylvania voters that are being
disenfranchised in an admitted political effort to keep voters from
voting in the upcoming elections only 118 days away.”

Stilp further called for the immediate return of all the federal HAVA funds involved in the contract.

The Pennsylvania Department of State contracted with the Bravo Group to
develop and implement advertising related to the voter identification
process.